Gentlemanly Technique

Watercolor, in the 18th and 19th centuries, was known on the Continent as the "English style"--a bow to the fact that though artists in many lands used the medium, none used it with greater enthusiasm than the painters of England. This month the National Gallery in Washington opens an exhibition of 200 English drawings and watercolors from the Mellon collection and from twelve British museums and the Queen's private collection (see color). There will be few shows in 1962 more pleasing.

The credit for the watercolor's popularity in England, some scholars say, goes to the British aristocracy. Young lords and gentlemen who took the Grand Tour got the urge to make a visual record of what they saw, and it became a matter of pride to know how to draw. As early as 1622, Henry Peacham's The Compleat Gentleman included drawing as an essential part of the aristocrat's education; later editions of the book contained a whole section on "Lantskip.'' The aristocratic amateurs produced no masterpieces of their own, but they set the stage for the watercolor's golden age that was soon to come.

Bathed in Elegance. The upper classes were fascinated by pictures which, like the modern photograph, could be put into albums. They bought engravings of London scenes, of romantic ruins, of exotic places they had seen on their travels, and of their own stately homes. This led to a longing for original drawings, which in turn gave way to a yearning for color. An Englishman produced a paper treated to withstand innumerable washings and spongings. With the demand so great and with new materials at hand, the watercolor became not only good art but also good business. Though the Royal Academy was slow to accept it, the public was enchanted.

Paul Sandby (1725-1809) is commonly called "the father of British watercolor." While other artists favored foreign scenes, Sandby stuck close to home and thus won fame as the first artist "to introduce Englishmen to the beauties of their own country." In such paintings as Landscape, with Dragoons Galloping Along the Road, he keeps tight control of his watercolor, almost as if he were working in oil. Yet, though details are precisely recorded, the painting as a whole seems light and free. It was Sandby's gift that he could bathe the most ordinary scene in elegance.

Misty Majesty. This crisp elegance also appears in Edward Dayes's Greenwich Hospital. Dayes's method was to draw in the outline of his composition first, then concentrate on light and shadow, and finally fill in the color. In time, other artists freed themselves from the necessity of drawing. Compared with Greenwich Hospital or Wheatley's Donnybrook Fair, the watercolors of Louis Thomas Francia, Peter de Wint, and the great Joseph Mallord William Turner seem to have been dipped in the atmosphere. There is no missing the cold dampness of De Wint's Cowes Castle, the warmth of Turner's Weymouth, or the misty majesty of Francia's Mousehold Heath.

No watercolorist of his time could reproduce the tantrums of nature better than Turner: he once had himself lashed, to the mast of a ship during a storm in order to experience the violence at first hand. But Painter Turner's fiery genius was unique. For the most part, the artists in the National Gallery show lived in a more orderly world, a world superintended by gentlemen. In such a world, the watercolor had a happy appeal: it could record mood but rarely passion; it tended to charm rather than arouse. It was never so at home before, and it never has been since.

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